MADD chapter gathers for support, remembrance

Monday

Dec 3, 2012 at 12:01 AM

STOCKTON - In August 1985, still reeling from the tragedy that had scarred his life forever, Franz Kegel attended the San Joaquin County Fair. It was there that he happened upon the Mothers Against Drunk Driving booth, a convergence that would provide Kegel with a purpose for the rest of his days.

Roger Phillips

STOCKTON - In August 1985, still reeling from the tragedy that had scarred his life forever, Franz Kegel attended the San Joaquin County Fair. It was there that he happened upon the Mothers Against Drunk Driving booth, a convergence that would provide Kegel with a purpose for the rest of his days.

Only two months earlier, Kegel had lost two daughters - Liesel, 16, and 15-year-old Elke - when they were killed by a drunken driver on Thornton Road. At the MADD booth at the fair on that summer day 27 years ago, Kegel met a woman who had lost her daughter to a drunken driver the previous Christmas. The woman had become an activist with MADD after her own tragedy.

"I figured if she could do it, I could do it, too," the 84-year-old Kegel said.

Sunday evening, Kegel was among dozens of people who have lost loved ones to drunken drivers who filled a meeting room at a March Lane hotel for the San Joaquin County-Stanislaus County MADD chapter's annual Candlelight Vigil of Remembrance and Hope. Some gathered before the event next to a display of photographs of more than 60 people from the region - men, women and children - who have died through the years because an intoxicated person chose to get behind the wheel of a vehicle.

Kegel and 80-year-old Dave Smith of Tracy have worked for MADD for years as victim's advocates, helping the survivors of those killed by drunken drivers navigate the court system. Smith's 18-year-old son, Jon, was killed in 1982.

"You kind of lose yourself trying to help other people who are going through the same thing," Dave Smith said of his years of advocacy.

Kegel said the effect of the work has been to "make something good out of something unspeakable."

He added, "I've tried to help people walking in the same shoes I've walked in."